INDUSTRY VIEWPOINT - The lean, mean profit machines

Ketan Karia, UK marketing director at Sybase, gives his opinion on the recent analyst predictions for the future direction and growth of the portable computing market.

Leading analysts, including the Butler Group, have predicted that portable computing is destined to become one of the largest markets in the world.

But why should 'glorified calculators' or 'electronic address books' bother resellers, software houses or even systems integrators? And why would they interest corporates such as Microsoft, Oracle and Sybase?

The answer - as always - comes down to size. Companies, such as 3Com, Hewlett Packard and Psion, have sold literally millions of the little machines. It's interesting to note that the adoption of the Palm Pilot has been even more rapid than that of the Walkman.

Staff at even the largest companies in the UK are sneaking these devices into work in their shirt pockets and then attempting to integrate their organisers with corporate data.

This all may sound a lot like the PC revolution, but only until you realise that the PC is not the slimline little platform it once was.

Nowadays, middle-age spread has descended on PC applications, while the 'form factor' of high-end PCs has, with the help of some innovation steroids such as LCD screens, been reduced - the trips to the health farm are not having the desired effect. What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away. Handheld devices are looking lean and mean.

So what sort of applications will run on these nifty newcomers? How about all the applications that are lugged around on laptops right now? How about salesforce automation, field marketing, insurance sales, consumer research? The list is endless.

But the memory capacity of these little devices isn't. If you need the ability to index and link to corporate systems remotely and your device has only 2Mb of memory, something has to go - and that something is usually the quality of the database.

Great news for database suppliers with low-fat, or small fingerprint, databases. Not so good for the gut-busting fatties addicted to high protein diets in a world where the best applications are those that are closest to the customer.

But this is absolutely fantastic news for the smart operators in the software channel. Because if the applications that reach out to the customers are svelte athletes, then the systems at the back end have to shape up as well.

They had better upload and download information as fast as their chips will allow them to. They had better not slow down the process - in short, they had better integrate.

At the moment there are estimated to be more than 10,000 developers for mobile devices in Europe alone. Those who are first off the block cannot afford to adopt a wait and see attitude towards whether hardware can catch up to the limitations imposed upon it by high-calorie software. They are responding to an opportunity that is right here, right now.

It's certainly true that that alcohol is not a natural friend to the weight conscious dieter. But to a channel that has learnt the hard way about shrinking margins for some and bulging bank balances for many, the value add posed by Martini databases comes as a refreshing tonic.

Adding value is easy to do, when the product and/or the services you resell can be used any time, any place, anywhere.